Lottery games, or Lotto as it is sometimes called, have gained great popularity in both the United States and abroad. Today, legal lotto games are conducted in most US states and Canadian provinces as well as internationally in many countries. Lotto is a major source of revenues for the states and provinces which sponsor lotteries.
Lotto is a gambling game in which the player must correctly pick a pre-set quantity of numbers to be drawn from a larger pool of numbers. In a typical lotto game, a player fills out a computer coded card(s) with selected number combinations. The card(s) are then presented to an authorized lottery dealer. The dealer issues lotto tickets containing the one or more selected sets that have been generated by a computerized ticket generator and purchased by the player.
Current jackpot games typically include matching six or seven numbers selected from a set of 40 or 50 or more against numbers drawn in a weekly or biweekly drawing. Other Lotto games, for example the so called PICK 3 or PICK 4 games, involve a selection of three and four numbers respectively from a group of (usually) 10 numbers, and matching the selected numbers against daily drawings held by the lottery sponsor.
At the time of the jackpot drawing, which is televised in many jurisdictions, the numbers (usually printed on balls) are withdrawn from the total number pool using number selection devices such as air flotation or drum roll. The balls are drawn without replacement, that is, after a particular number is drawn it is not returned to the pool and cannot be redrawn. A preset number of balls forms a winning number combination. If the numbers selected by the player on a particular ticket correspond to the winning number combination, the player wins a cash prize. Currently existing lotto games pay cash awards in instances where a player picks all of the drawn numbers corresponding to a winning number combination, as well as those instances in which a player has picked less than all of the numbers, for example when the player has correctly picked four out of six or five out of six numbers of the winning number combination.
Lotto tickets are typically purchased in two ways. Initially, players can code up a computer readable card with their number selections. Alternatively, lottery tickets are purchased by players who permit random ticket generators to generate their tickets. The selected number combinations are then transmitted to a central computerized system which stores the selected number combinations, whether coded up by a player or randomly selected by machine. Each of the transmitted number combinations corresponds to a purchased ticket. Alternatively, the wage is placed via a web server on the internet. At the time of the drawing, the central governing authority, which is typically a state contractor, can thereby quickly determine whether one or more jackpot prizes has been awarded, and can further determine the number and distribution of sub jackpot prizes.
Since the winning numbers are picked in a random process the game of lotto is entirely a game of luck. Nevertheless, players often apply superstition or attempts to use statistics from previous drawings to improve their odds. Although mathematically this may not make sense, this behavior appeals to humans' tendency and drive to develop models and theories to succeed. It would therefore be desirable to provide a novel lotto style game which would increase player interest by encouraging prediction of the outcome and thus help to increase the revenues of a lottery which adopted the game.
The present invention adds a dimension to a lotto type game where it actually becomes meaningful to attempt to predict the winning numbers. Some of the winning numbers, instead of resulting from a random selection process, are the selections that received the fewest bets, thus the players themselves influence the winning number combination. The individual player who can predict the bets of the majority of the players—and thence choose the opposite number selection strategy—will increase his/her odds of being the winner.
In traditional lotto, the player selects a set of numbers out of a given number population, e.g. picks 7 numbers between 1 and 34. This game is a so-called without-replacement type of drawing. The player simply picks a series of balls/numbers out of a single basket, wherein the balls/numbers are not put back into the basket after drawn, and so each number can only occur once. In the present invention the balls are instead picked with replacement, or more aptly, from different baskets. If each number is picked from a different basket, then each number can also be in a different range. For example, number one could be a number between 1 and 10, and number 2 could be a number between 1 and 34. Pick 3 is an example of with-replacement game, but in this case the balls are still picked from a single basket, i.e. from the same number range, only with the number replaced in between. In such games the order of the numbers are important, and this is what is meant by positionally significant. Having multiple baskets may appear to add complexity to the game, and in order to mitigate this effect, one can utilize numbering systems with inherent meaning. For example, each basket can represent a part of a date/time combination such as minute, hour, or day of month, and put together the numbers represent a date and a time.
Current lotto numbering systems, as described above, are not very interesting to the player. This is because whether a player chooses to code up a card or allow a machine to make the selection, there is little or no meaning attached to the number. A further dimension of interest can thus be added by making the number selection inherently meaningful by mapping it to something real such as a date/time combination or a geographical coordinate system. Doing this makes the player/game interface more enticing.
Adding these new dimensions—the least chosen selection aspect and numbers with inherent meaning—could attract interest to the game and improve the revenues for the sponsors. The authorized lotto dealer could publish the winning number combinations from previous games providing useful input for players when picking the numbers for the next game. Online user groups, or web communities can also post theories and discussions, further fueling interest and generating sophisticated game strategies. Even for players who take no interest in predicting the outcome or using some predetermined strategy, the game still retains all the qualities of a conventional lotto game. Not knowing anything about previous games or other players' strategies means that the winning numbers essentially are random. Thus, the player that picks random numbers has exactly the same odds as before to win. Potentially, the prizes may be bigger since the winning numbers are always the least played numbers.